Cover of Ultra Transcenders Veeam Backup & Replication 13
ULTRA TRANSCENDERS · AN INDEPENDENT STUDY GUIDE

VBR-13 Veeam Backup & Replication 13

An independent study guide for Veeam Certified Engineer+ (VMCE+) v13: Book 1 of 3, Backup & Replication · by Tony Rough

Know which Veeam job, repository and restore option fits, and why.

  • 14 chapters
  • 10 diagrams
  • 100+ common traps
  • 400+ glossary terms
Amazon.co.ukKindle: coming soonPaperback: coming soon
Amazon.comKindle: coming soonPaperback: coming soon

Due on Amazon in January 2027, in Kindle and paperback editions.

Free glossary of the book's terms

What's inside

Running Veeam Backup & Replication well isn't about memorising wizards. It's about knowing which proxy, repository, retention setting or restore method meets a requirement, and why the alternatives fall short.

This independent study guide covers Veeam Backup & Replication 13, written from Veeam's own version 13 documentation. It is book 1 of a set of three that follows the three courses required for the Veeam Certified Engineer+ (VMCE+) v13 certification, and it suits engineers coming back to Veeam after working with version 12: the notes on what changed, from the Linux-based Veeam Software Appliance to the expanded malware detection, are throughout.

Organised by technology

Fourteen chapters, each one readable on its own:

Inside

Understanding, not memorising

There are no exam questions in this book, and it is not Veeam training material. It explains the knowledge the courses and the exam look for, so you can reason through situations you have never seen and bring the same judgement to a real backup environment.

Written by Tony Rough, a cloud architect with over twenty years in IT infrastructure.

Part of the Ultra Transcenders series from Distilled Press. An independent publication, not affiliated with, sponsored by or endorsed by Veeam Software. Veeam, Veeam Backup & Replication and SureBackup are trademarks or registered trademarks of Veeam Software Group GmbH and/or its affiliates.

Is this book for you?

Which certification, which book?

Exam coverage

Every skill area in Veeam's VBR-13 outline (as of September 2026 (course data sheet H54GGS C.00)), and the chapters that cover it.

Skill areaWeightChapters
Course objectives—1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14
Course topics—1, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14

See every objective and where the book covers it

Chapters

  1. Data protection strategy and the Veeam Data Platform
  2. Architecture: the backup server and core components
  3. Deploying v13: Veeam Software Appliance, Windows installs and licensing
  4. Securing the backup infrastructure
  5. Protecting virtual machines: backup jobs and backup methods
  6. Agents, physical machines and unstructured data
  7. Repositories: hardened, immutable, object storage and scale-out
  8. Backup copy, long-term retention and the 3-2-1 rule
  9. Replication, CDP and infrastructure optimisation
  10. Recovery verification: SureBackup and virtual labs
  11. Choosing and performing a recovery
  12. Malware detection, incident response and post-incident recovery
  13. Enterprise applications and plug-ins
  14. Enterprise Manager, monitoring, troubleshooting and calculators

Plus an appendix glossary of 400+ terms, each linked to the Veeam Help Center, with the same terms explained free online for print readers.

Look inside

Short excerpts from the book, exactly as they appear in it, so you can see how it explains things.

The opening of chapter 1 · Chapter 1: Data protection strategy and the Veeam Data Platform

Every Veeam design starts with business questions rather than product features: how much data can the organisation afford to lose, how quickly must each service come back, and which threats must the backups survive. This chapter turns those questions into recovery point and recovery time objectives, maps them to Veeam Backup & Replication 13 features, and frames the 3-2-1 rule and its 3-2-1-1-0 extension. It closes with the scope of what Veeam Data Platform protects in v13 and where the companion products fit. Later chapters cover each feature in depth; this one gives the decision framework that ties them together.

A comparison table · Chapter 1: Data protection strategy and the Veeam Data Platform · The 3-2-1 rule and the 3-2-1-1-0 extension

The Veeam Best Practices security guide expands the rule to 3-2-1-1-0. The extra 1 means keeping at least one copy of the backups on immutable, air-gapped or offline media (ideally all copies immutable). The 0 means zero errors when automatic recoverability verification is enforced, using SureBackup jobs to prove that backups or replicas can be recovered. The same guidance recommends that short-term retention be immutable for at least one to two weeks and long-term retention for at least four weeks.

Rule element Veeam features that deliver it Owning chapter
3 copies Backup job plus backup copy job, backup to tape, or SOBR capacity tier copy Chapter 8: Backup copy, long-term retention and the 3-2-1 rule
2 media Disk repositories plus object storage, tape or deduplicating appliance Chapter 7: Repositories: hardened, immutable, object storage and scale-out
1 off-site Backup copy to a remote site, object storage or Veeam Cloud Connect; off-site replicas Chapters 8 and 9
1 immutable, air-gapped or offline Hardened repository, object storage immutability, WORM-capable SMB/NFS shares, Data Domain and StoreOnce immutability, tape, rotated drives Chapter 7
0 errors SureBackup recovery verification, health checks Chapter 10: Recovery verification: SureBackup and virtual labs

A common trap · Chapter 1: Data protection strategy and the Veeam Data Platform · Business objectives: RPO, RTO and protection scope

Common trap: Treating RPO as “how long a restore takes” - RPO measures data loss (the age of the last usable restore point); the time to bring services back is RTO, and it depends on the recovery method as much as on the job schedule.

Sample diagrams

Scale-out backup repository tiers, placement and offload policies
Scale-out backup repository tiers, placement and offload policies
Control path and data path between the core components
Control path and data path between the core components
Detection during backup, Scan Backup and Secure Restore working on one workload's restore points
Detection during backup, Scan Backup and Secure Restore working on one workload's restore points

Free study notes

Some sections of the book, free to read online:

Study plan

A free week-by-week plan through the book at a 4-week or 8-week pace, with the study notes and exam skill areas for each week.

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About the author

Tony Rough is a cloud architect with more than twenty years in IT infrastructure, designing Azure platforms for UK organisations at a Microsoft partner. He holds the Azure Solutions Architect Expert, Azure Administrator and Azure Security Engineer certifications and has passed more than thirty Microsoft exams. Ultra Transcenders is the series he wished he'd had.